and I am yours
by Madame Rhea Di'Ey
Summary: He proposes the same way he does everything else - in a flat tone that makes her want to smack him with a pan. Still, she can't say no - gods help her, she could never say no. [SasuKarin. Happy birthday, asamino!]


**title: **and I am yours  
**raw word count: **1043  
**notes: **this is for the awesome-tastic _asamino _whose birthday I hope I'm not too late for. ;A;  
**notes2: **this is the first time I'm writing SasuKarin and it's all Asa's fault so yeah. New ship here I am!

* * *

Sasuke isn't a cuddler.

She knows that.

So Karin can't help but be surprised over and over again every time he softly traces the bitemark scars that run across her body when they're done getting hot and sticky – he runs his hands over her torso and arms with something unreadable burning coolly behind his dark eyes, an unusual air of uncertainty and carefulness clinging to him like perfume.

She lifts her hand, and he doesn't flinch when she runs her fingers through his hair and pushes back his bangs from where sweat had plastered them to his forehead; instead, he closes his eyes and relaxes into her touch. A moment passes, then two, and then he's bending down and tracing kisses along the lines of every scar, the contact of his lips with her skin softer than butterfly wings.

It sends shivers up her spine, and Karin arches into his touch instinctively. She feels her pulse quicken ever so slightly, an increase to the beat of the pump that thuds low in her ears; there's a gasp lost somewhere in the night air, a sound too quiet to last in the silence.

Her fingers tangle and lightly fist in his hair, her free hand coming up to run down the curve of his spine.

"Karin?" Sasuke breathes against her skin, his lips a hairsbreadth away from her navel.  
She gasps again, just as quiet as before, and swears she can feel his lips curl in a lazy, self-satisfied smirk. "Yes?" she breathes, talking to the ceiling rather than to the pair of black eyes peeking up at her.  
"How would you feel about becoming the new Uchiha matriarch?" he asks, voice muffled slightly by an open-mouthed kiss he decides to press above her bellybutton just then.

Karin pauses.

She stares at an annoying stain on the ceiling for a good minute, frozen in limp shock.

(Sasuke sports a shit-eater grin, but then again, that's the norm with him in these post-war summer days. She's torn between kissing him senseless and kicking his teeth in. That's also the norm_._)

"P-pardon?" she stutters out in between two rapidly sucked-in breaths; he rolls his eyes and clucks his tongue.  
_Bastard. You're toying with me, aren't you? Stupid, stupid – _"I'm asking you to marry me, Karin."

His words ring out in her ears, an endless echo that sounds like a really monotonic choir of angels.

It's the least romantically possible way to be asked for in marriage, and yet her stomach is clenched tight thanks to seven simple words. The least of which she would have ever expected to hear tumbling from his lips, granted, but still – seven simple worlds that, had she been standing, would've sent her to her knees.

Sometimes, the power he has over her leaves her in a mix of stunned, confused and frustrated; she'd vowed to never let anyone dominate her the way Orochimaru had, but then Sasuke barreled back into her life and the leash he managed to slip around her throat with such annoying ease was even tighter than the collar her previous master had donned her with.

Karin hadn't loved the Sannin. Respected him, yes – loved him, no. He was too strange, too far from sane, too far from normal and for everything that meant affection for that kind of sentiment to grow inside her. Like the serpent he reinvented himself as, he had ice-cold blood running through his veins, as befitting of the corpse suits he donned himself with; his chakra had literally _gave her nightmares_. Having Orochimaru around had always felt like listening to children scream and widows weep and men be dismembered alive – always felt like a monster was in the room, bidding its' time before it claimed fresh blooded prey.

(Sometimes, she thought of all the things that made the man so very wrong in his head. And when it got too deep and too bloody, she backed out and didn't admit she was crying. In a sense, she pitied him.)

Sasuke was another thing entirely, however. He was walking fire, burning brighter than Venus with the intensity of his emotions. She fell in love with that passion of his, with the liquid flames that boiled beneath his skin – and when his red-hot silhouette began to turn blacker and blacker, she had already fallen in too deep to be able to crawl back up.

He had drew her in the way a lamp draws moths. _I'm such a masochist, _she thinks, disturbingly resigned.

She tears her eyes from the ceiling, crimson eyes seeking out black ones. As they collide, Karin sees that he's waiting for an answer patiently, chin propped up on a palm, that long body of his tangled between her feet. He's got his business face on; that insufferable poker face she aggressively wants to scrub away with a bath sponge.

She purses her lips, biting down lightly on the tender flesh. They're swollen from where he'd earlier bitten them in the very same spot; she can't help but think of how many of those scars were left by his teeth. In turn, that leads to her thinking of all the things they've been through – of all the times he'd thrown her away, of all the times she swore she'll not forgive him anymore, of all the times he came crawling back and of all the times she'd welcomed him back with open, wanting arms.

_How could I possibly say no? __I've waited almost my whole life for you to ask me that damned question,_ she thinks with a wry smile, and it feels like something's exploding in her ribcage.

(It's just her heart, coming undone at the seams from too much joy taken in one sitting.)

Instead, she says, "Idiot. _Of course _I'm marrying you," and pulls him up into a kiss.

The rest of that night is lost in a blur, something sticky-sweet that transpires in whispers. Dawn comes, and the sun finds them in a tangle of bedsheets and limbs. Later in the morning, Karin rolls out of bed with bleary eyes, a fresh set of scars and a shit-eater grin to rival her _husband's._ It feels so good, to be able to finally say it.

_I am __Mrs. Karin Uchiha. _


End file.
